Date of Award

1-1-1983

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Teaching & Learning

Abstract

The purpose of this study was, first, to compare the quality of writing that was generated from remembered dreams with other story writing that was created from beginning sentences, second, was to explore the remembered dream world of ninth graders as to the importance, place, and creative use of dreams in waking life.Twenty students, 10 from each of two ninth-grade English classes in a west-central Minnesota junior high school, composed the research population.The two groups of 10 created three pieces of writing, Group A from dreams and Group B from beginning sentences. Differences in quality of writing were measured by the Literary Rating Scale (Tway 1971) as adapted by the investigator to the Qualities of Fictional Writing.Individual dream-life interviews of the participants followed the writing assignments. An interview questionnaire, developed by the investigator, elicited wide-ranging responses. Interview data were analyzed in four categories: patterns, relationship to waking life, dimensions, and creative use.Results of the study were: (1) No meaningful difference in writing quality of the two groups was revealed with one exception. Scale element Self-Revelation was rated 1.78 for Group A as compared with .71 for Group B. Despite this difference, the composite mean rating score for Group A was 8.84 and 8.61 for Group B (out of a possible 20). (2) Commonalities, however, did emerge: organization, structure, and level of reader interest of the writing were considered good. Whereas, character development and elaboration were especially problematic. (3) Consensus was that dreams were potential resource material for creative writing. (4) The majority interviewed thought dreams to be important and valued, thus providing insight into one's self. (5) Some evidence from this study seems supportive of Foulkes' work (1982) that dream development parallels Piaget's stages of waking cognition. (6) A most interesting and unexpected finding was that of sex difference in dream self-behavior (e.g., passivity of girls/activity of boys). (7) Chapter V of this study includes the investigator's response to the educational implications of dreams. The assumptions are that dreams are one way to encourage writing and one way to develop reflective thinking of one's inner self.

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